07/03/2011

I started getting worried around the beginning of June because my matajilla poppies were growing big stems all throughout spring, but weren't making with the buds. Way back in 2006, when I put in the tub of nearly-dead sticks, I was warned that if I managed to get them to live and thrive, down the road there might be a dormant phase, where I would get a big bush of flower-less stems. Thing is, there'd be no advance warning if that happens, and no way of knowing how many seasons that would last.

So when late May hit with no buds, and start of June with no buds, I figured okay, this must be dormant year. I wanted to check with Shane** but he hits the neighborhood way before I'm out of bed in general ... let alone during Fringe.

But! A friend who is a floral design goddess told me that many things are blooming late this season, and though she wasn't familiar with matajilla's, it could be that's what was going on. Sure enough, she was right! About a week or so later, buds started appearing, and now I'm the middle of a beautiful burst of giant flowers that look like food, with many buds on deck. Behold (click to embiggen)!

I count every day, and I think I might hit 200 blooms this season. I love them so.

01/01/2011

The day before I headed to The Boondocks For Christmas With The Family, the Landlord handed me the new Walter Mosley, which, for some baffling reason, I didn't know existed! The Landlord and I swap books all the time, one of the reasons he's a cool guy.

So I was all yay, a plane book probably better than the one I was planning to bring along! What I did not in any way expect was that I would read all but 40 pages on the direct flight out. THIS BOOK IS THAT GOOD, despite the eyebrow-raising hitch in his descriptions of Los Angeles, which slips into cliche vague at points, and the occasional inaccurate descriptions of bus routes. I could not put it down. It is possibly one of the best ones he's ever done, and yes I know that's a Big Statement, but as I've read all he's done except for the porn one, I feel confident saying so.

Finished it during a lull on Christmas night (while secretly pining for the French Quarter, so close yet so painfully far away because they'd notice if I'd grabbed the keys and made a break for it). The next day, upon delivering Me to the airport, Mom took it from me with a Ooo I Love Walter. Mom claimed the Landlord's book for herself, even though I was all umm this isn't my book, actually.* (Three days later, moments after finishing the book, Mom called to talk about it and we had the most amazing chat!)

Finishing Mosley in basically one sitting caused a problem, as I had packed lightly and only had the one book for the journey. As we three sat there in the holding area** watching it load up with what Dad called "more screaming children than I have ever seen on one plane," I realized my backup plan of sleeping on the flight back home was not going to work.*** I needed to find something - anything - to read.

So I took Dad beautiful holiday card**** filled with Merry Christmas Money to the airport bookstore down the hall. Hudson something? The official bookstore of airports that are usually filled with crap works not to my taste? That place.

And lo! Amidst all those crap not to my taste books there was a new Stephen King collection that I was also previously unaware of existing! There were two hardcovers left and I gleefully snagged one. Thank you, o Flying Spaghetti Monster, for the glory that is Stephen King (even if the cover of this one is stupid). I read half of the book on that flight and finished it the next day (bringing my 2010 book total up to 107 of fiction and fact, not that you care, but I track these things. Counting the book that will be finished by week's end, tally will be 108).

I love short stories, I really love extended short stories, and I particularly adore King's work in the spaces between short story and novel because he's supremely good at it.

Meanwhile, during this week of off-the-grid I "redecorated" part of the front yard by digging it up (again) and transplanting my aloe, deer grass and most of a pot of purple succulent thingies from their nursery to the strip where the fire sticks had run riot along with the crab grass. I hope that down the road this will look lovely and will allow me to easily keep on top of rooting out the crab grass in this section:

I'd like to transplant some of my silver falls or my low-growing succulents in pots on the porch to this space as ground cover down the road, but the crab grass in this strip is so stubborn I don't see any option outside of bare dirt so I can get at the crabbies when they poke up. I have been at War with the crab grass in this strip for five years now. I don't understand why I've been able to eradicate it everywhere but this strip. (Note to self: consult with Shane.)

Gotta say, the weeks of rain previous almost crushed my spirit, but all that water made the weeding and replanting much easier by breaking up the mostly-clay dirt we've got in the yard. Thank you, wettest December since 1889!

I did not take a Before comparison shot in any of the front yard because that would expose my Shame. The first photo here gives a hint of how bad it was. The firesticks in the third photo look innocent, but in the space of nine months those fucking things went Wilding! It seemed every week they were either a foot taller or wider. They turned from Tasteful to Tacky.

Due to the day job and other demands elsewhere this year, my ability to weed and do regular upkeep was severely compromised, and the structure of the firesticks made weeding difficult anyway. Members of the family of Gardener of Eden, whose property is on the right of the picture above, were not the only ones to express Relief once I started in this week. I (again) heard from many several neighbors daily who thought I had given up and were concerned the yard would return to what it looked like before I moved in. Hee!

Yard work also included weeding everywhere else; giggling every time I came across a worm as that meant the worm colonies I tried to establish five years ago have firmly taken root, unlike those hussy ladybugs who just flew away every single time; culling the Birds of Paradise; reducing and relocating some of the aloe; murdering the bougainvillea that keeps trying to return in one spot; pulling up the weed grasses I don't know the name of; and pruning the Fried Egg Poppies in prep for next year's bloom. I must say I'm concerned about next year because the pruning happened much later than it should have because I was waiting for the solid week of cold needed first, but the weather didn't cooperate. We'll see what happens in the spring.

Throughout all this, I got to thinking that while it is important to be water-wise with SoCal gardening, I very much miss my brown-eyed Susans. I gave them up for reasons of environment (they need tons of water, which is wasteful) and racoons/possums (they dig up the tasty root tubers, killing the plant and pissing me off). I'm going to research the possibility of bringing back a small clump of BES next year somehow. There's got to be a way that won't waste water or feed the ravenous racoons/possums.

Anywho, "redecorating" the yard left me with with a huge pile of firesticks. After neighbors and a few friends pounced on them I was still left with a huge amount to get rid of:

Because I didn't want to bin them (and, frankly, couldn't as both of the green waste bins were filled with detritus from Elsewhere in the yard) I turned to an open call to strangers via a Twit. Those people came by in the rain the next day and took about 2/3 of the above. Yay! To each visitor I responsibly provided warnings about the poisonous sap, the tendency of these things to turn into Yard Thugs and the center trunk - if allowed to get that big - becoming as thick & tough as an adolescent tree. (I didn't get rid of all my firesticks. I do like them a lot and there's still plenty in the ground. I've just got to figure out how to use them properly.)

The strangest thing uncovered during the marathon weeding was this:

That's a purple succulent in toddler phase, hidden under fans of weed grasses, firesticks and arenegade Bird of Paradise offshoot. It's light green because it has been mostly shaded, and I think its petals are thin for the same reason. Or maybe it's starving what with the weeds and so forth. I'll ask Shane. Since all of the purples are either on the other side of the yard or in pots, I have no idea how it got all the way over here alone. Mystery! For now I'm going to leave it, but eventually it will have to be relocated.

When I wasn't writing, gardening, sleeping attending local Kwanzaa***** events, hanging out with various combinations of friends for daily food/drink, sleeping, fiddling with this, greatly enjoying these righteous rants, hitting up movies with others or alone, and also sleeping, I was lounging on the couch with help from The Best Slightly Annoying Lap Desk Ever:

I have no idea why indoor photos from the replacement CrackBerry are tinged blue. I also have no idea why Cuddle Kitty does this every time I settle in for a round of reading.

* She was all I don't have anything to read and I am your Mother. I can go to EsoWon to get a replacement copy for the Landlord who, being a good guy, will understand.

** Their flight left just over an hour after mine. Gotta say, Dad did not do a good job of hiding his increasing amusement over the composition of my plane under a mask of sympathy.

*** Sure enough, once aloft when one of the kids set to screaming that triggered the rest of them all throughout the plane. It was hell. Because the flight back is always longer than the flight out due to battling the jet stream, it was a Long Hell. Even though a couple of the howling kids were cuties, I was torn between sympathy for some of them and wanting them all to be down in the cargo hold.

**** In the immediate family he's the one who gets the Celebratory Event cards for Moi & the Sibling, and he nails it every time. Dad puts a lot of effort into finding just the right card for each of us, and my understanding is Mom signs it but is not consulted - which means in my family it is The Man's Job to find the perfect heartfelt expression of sentiment and love for the daughters. I have cards going back years. Some of them I carry around in my DayRunner to provide a burst of pick-me-up when needed.

***** My holiday season doesn't end until Jan. 1 (though the Holiday Eating tends to continue into the following week).

05/29/2010

Six of the 32 buds so far spotted this season are in bloom. Here are two of them up front, one visible behind stems off on the left: Update! Swapped out for better photos freshly snapped Sunday morning. The open bloom count is now 10!:

Cat was Totally Unhappy taking that picture.

Four buds are visible in this shot. Imagine what it will look like if all of them pop at once! I can't wait.

Once I get hold of the good camera, or successfully recharge the second-best camera, I shall assault you with even more pictures that are of course less about pictures of flowers and more about Bragging.

Background on this particular element of my garden goes back to 2007. When these things went in, even Shane thought nothing much would come of them. But I am my Mother's child. Dirt? I fuckin OWN you.

03/28/2010

So today I rectify this lapse! It was a *gorgeous* weekend, and since I couldn't do anything word-wise until I heard back from the BT, I spent this entire weekend weeding and tweaking the yard.

In truth, due to heavy schedule demands elsewhere, I had kinda sorta let detailed yard maintenance fall to the wayside over the past nine months. How bad did it get? This shot of the firesticks nursery will give you some idea:

I know! HOW CAN I EVEN HOLD MY HEAD UP IN PUBLIC I MEAN REALLY?! It had gotten so bad that when I started working on it all this weekend, several neighbors came over to say "O you're weeding! We're so glad." BOY was my face red, though you couldn't tell due to the melanin and all.

(For the record, cleared the weeds from the firesticks nursery out on Sunday.)

Gotta start back in the winter, during the rains. One of the plans for 2010 was getting the side strip in shape, definitively clearing out all of the crab grass, making it impossible for Shane's Evil Brother to destroy my deer grass, and turning that section of the yard into drought-tolerant Pretty.

In order to do that I needed rain to soften the ground. Our soil is good, but it's largely heavy clay. I needed a significant period of rain to loosen the ground enough to strip crabgrass from an area 4-feet wide by 25-feet long. I was begging the Universe for massive amounts of rain while feeling guilty for doing so because Big Rain meant the people hit by the fires would be fucked up with mudslides. So when these stormclouds started to gather to the north...

...I cheered. I did! I am a horrible, selfish person.

Waited about two hours once the rain started to fall, then I went out there with my big shovel, adventure hat, blue urban cargo pants and a T-shirt, IWW shoes and set to digging up crabgrass. Once the crabgrass was dug out I replanted some of the firesticks culled from the Motherplant, added a brick border at the sidewalk, and transplanted three cuttings from the Redneck Mother Aloe. It took four hours. Here's what it looked like when I was done:

To no one's surprise, the next day I came down with a really bad cold.

And then I went into a long period of neglect-fueled-by-demands-elsewhere, until this weekend. I'm not gonna show you the pre-pictures due to embarrassment. That one up top is enough. Seriously, how bad was it? Some of my container plants had weeds growing in the pots! Weeds in this strip rampaged higher than the firesticks! No wonder I got the "we" comment from the neighbors.

Anywho, though Shane's Evil Brother had cut down my Mother Clump of deer grass last year because he is a complete and total fucking idiot and also we have been Battling with each other for a couple few years now, I had been cultivating smaller clumps of the deer grass in an area he could not get to. (He thinks deer grass, a native plant, is a weed, because he is a complete and total fucking idiot.) These clumps are smaller than the Mother and I had no intent of moving them originally, but now was the time to dig them up and transplant them to the side strip:

If the plan works, those tiny slivers of deer grass will bush out lovely. Then I can break them and add clumps in between the rest of the firesticks along the strip. If they don't die, in a couple of years it will be gorgeous!

Now, in both of those pictures you can see three aloes. Those were snips from the RMA that went in over the winter. They didn't take. In general I give any transplanted item three weeks to get over the Sulking and start with the Growing. You never know what's going to take strong...at least I don't. These three snips decided to Up And Die instead of Grow. So I took them out and replaced them with a snip of a stronger part of the RMA, flanked with two bits from the rescued from a construction site in downtown LA purple succulent nursery:

We'll monitor how that turns out. All of my fingers are crossed!

The purple succulent nursery is among my Pride And Joys. When I took these things from the construction site down the street from the old office, they were dying. I had four droopy cabbage heads that I put in pots and pampered. They responded so well that eventually I had to put some in the ground and some in a much bigger pot!

These things ran so riot once in the care of somebody who paid attention to them that I ended up with more than I have room for! I routinely pluck stems from the "nursery" and give them away. The "nursery" is the pot in the second picture. Those are the ones I transplant or give away. Every time I give away one of these or the firesticks the CFE gets pissed off because he (rightly) points out that I could sell them for good money instead. He doesn't get it. He's also the only person I know to have killed a Philodendron - which, like firesticks, Do Not Die even if you pretty much ignore them or actively attempt to kill them - so I ignore his bitching. My Mom gets it. She's proud of my gardening and my default setting of Passing On.

Longtime readers will recognize that the purples in the ground in the first picture occupy the space where I had planted the Brown-Eyed Susans, which are tied with the Matilija poppy as my my fave flower. But eventually I could no longer justify the amount of water required to keep the Susans rolling. We who garden in SoCal should think about the Big Picture. We are under drought conditions, and have been for several years. Due to global warming, that situation is not going to improve. We cannot justify wasting water on pretty things that are not edible. We *must* be water-wise. We can be water-wise and still create beauty.

I very much miss my cheery Brown-Eyed Susans, but I am enormously happy with the rescued purple succulents. The landlord also loves them. I've transplanted two pots of them over to his side of the house once it occurred to me that he was kind of jealous that they were only on my side of the house. Like me, he particularly likes it when they bloom.

However, my Neglect over these nine months sort of affected the purple cabbage. There's another purple drought-tolerant plant I'm trying to cultivate enough of to turn into ground cover on the far side of the house. (I kinda like purple things.) I can't remember what this thing is called, but I grew tons of it when I lived in Florida and in Palm Springs. The base plant is a pretty purple, and come breeding time it sends out delightful tiny pink flowers. The batch I'm trying to cultivate now comes from a fellow renter neighbor across the street who let me take clippings. "I've never met my landlord," she said. "I don't need his permission. I live here. Take what you want."

For some reason I'm having trouble getting these things to grow as well as in the past. Of the six pots of clippings I took 2.5 years ago, only one has survived, and it's been kind of wuss. This weekend I discovered that one of the plants in the purple succulent nursery has rooted itself inside the surviving pot of the other purple thing! It went all renegade!

I have no idea what I'm going to do about this development.

Meanwhile, one of the cuttings from the Redneck Mother Aloe that I transplanted to the front four years ago continues to Go To Town. When I put her in she had just the five center fingers. She has clearly been busting moves since then!

She is surrounded by the silver falls, and you can see one of the safe area deer grass clumps to the left. Pic taken after weeding.

Weeding rescued one of the four terra cotta stone guys I buried in the space way back when this project started:

Cuddle Kitty decided to maybe sort of actually step outside of the house on Sunday. As usual, this is as far as he got. (The outside world scares him.) That weed next to him? It was so bad that I actually had weeds coming through cracks on the porch!

I aim to do better with keeping up with weeding maintenance this year.

04/30/2009

Sadly, not my neighborhood, but one of the historic zones down behind the Orange Curtain. "Sadly" only due to the part where there were chickens wandering around. I love chickens, and was allowed to care for a small flock owned by somebody else back when I lived in Klan country. They were batshit insane, but lovely. The most amazing chickens I have ever seen in my life live out here, over in Altadena, owned by Tim Dundon, who didn't think there was anything strange at all about somebody showing up with garbage bags and a Jetta. I had originally planned to just pick up the compost and leave, but ended up staying for a few hours listening to him (big deal for me; normally I don't react well to hippies), heading up to the stables and wandering around his jungle-in-the-city paradise with my jaw on the ground. He's an interesting guy (note...this is a better video). His chickens are for the most part feral, have the run of the place (along with bunnies and other creatures), and are the most lustrous chickens in the universe. Even the show chickens at the LA County Fair don't look as good as these wild things of his.

My understanding is many of his neighbors would like for him to Go Away Now, especially after the fire incident, but he's not gonna. He's been there for decades, he enjoys giving compost away to home city gardeners like me & selling it cheaply to bigger operations. Mostly he likes to evangalize about growing things in a natural way. I attribute much of the success of what I've been able to do to the front yard to his compost, which he calls "craptonite". Shane,*** of course, knew all about Tim. I think it's possible that Shane was impressed that I hunted Tim down all by myself, but it's possible he's not. Shane's kinda hard to read.

So anyways, couple of weeks ago I was down in the OC for a thing. When the chickens crossed the road in front of my car as I was looking for parking, I was so pleased I had the good camera in hand.

Here's the rooster. Isn't he gorgeous?

Here's the rooster with his companion. She's such a cutie!

I happened to have some cat food in hand and tried to lure the pair over so I could get good shots. One thing that's unwise to do is run after a chicken. 98% of the time it will just run off in a panic, but there's that 2% chance that it might fling itself right at your fucking face. Even if it knows you it might do this, because chickens are crazy.

The cat food wasn't working. An elder came out of the house next door to see what was going on, we communicate via gesture & smile, he watches me try to sneak up on the chickens for a few minutes. Then he calls into the house, a younger guy pops his head out, they speak, younger guy goes back in.

A few beats later, the younger guy comes back with a tortilla! The chickens make a beeline for him, and we chat while I'm shooting. (The shots above were post-tortilla.) He tells me the chickens around there like tortillas. Of course. I can't stop laughing, they're laughing at me not being able to stop laughing.

That was a good day, except for the part where it took 2.5 hours to get back up the 5.

02/06/2009

This is all that's left of my main clump of deer grass, and the latest
in a looong string of transgressions by Shane's Evil Brother. When I use my axe and machete to ginsu that evil man into fertilizer, this photo shall be introduced into evidence by my defense team. Combined with the rest of the photos and testimony from the neighbors, I fully expect the jury to Understand.

This happened last week and I am still beyond pissed about it. Because SEB shows up when I'm at work I have never been able to be here when he is and Put The Fear Of Me into him. Since the landlord is a nice guy completely averse to any form of conflict, chances are very good he's unaware he's done anything wrong, unless Shane happened to notice and mention it to him. But Shane's pretty much staying out of it for perfectly understandable reasons.

On the other hand, I have a growing suspicion that Shane's Evil Brother is not responsible for what happened to my morning glories, but lacking concrete evidence there's fuck all I can do about it.

12/02/2008

Silver falls are pretty nifty. Drought tolerant, pretty color, look good trailing from giant pots and, I'd hoped, as ground cover. Silver falls were not part of the original plan, but during one of the excursions looking a certain native plant that was nigh unto impossible to find, there were a couple of starter pots of them on sale for around $2 or something. I snagged one.

From Sept. 2006, the silver falls are the grey/silver cluster in the front corner:

That's it! Started with just one small pot, and the falls took it from there, growing deep on top of itself as well as branching out. A few shots from spring and fall of 2007:

Silver falls now, Nov. 2008, starting with that same corner...... and heading over toward the center:

Couple more years and they'll make it all the way over to the other side!

The silver falls weren't the only things that went in despite not being part of the original plan. The grassy things in the top photo are Deer Grass, one of the 300+ California native grasses. They were another gift from Mr. In Memoriam, and as they grew I had to remove them from that corner, split and transplant elsewhere. Splitting and transplanting elsewhere has turned out to be a regular thing with the deer grass. Two I put in the center, framing a cluster from the Redneck Mother Aloe. One I put on the side of the house where it was bushed out, and soon I will have to split that one. I'm leaning toward making a row of them on the side of the house. Another interesting factoid about deer grass is it was one of the foundation materials for the bundle coil baskets woven by the region's tribes.

12/01/2008

My Redneck Mother Aloe began life as three fingerlings in a seedling holder purchased at a Woolworth's deep in klan country of Central Florida ever so many years ago for the kitchen table of my first apartment. It's now about 50-lbs. Every few years it has to be transplanted into a bigger pot, which is always an Adventure of strength, faith and much bad language. When this garden project began I took some of the pots of cuttings from the mother plant and put them into the ground.

Spring, 2006:

They were happy there. REALLY happy. So happy that they ran around like heathens and even began blooming, which I had never seen before, except for in the wild. They also changed color a couple of times and grew spikes, which was fascinating. I still don't know why they did that, and keep forgetting to ask Shane about it.

November, 2008:

There was actually more in that space, but in early fall, feeling it was getting a wee bit crowded, I plucked quite a few of them to put in pots, many of which I gave away. The rest are still in pots in the yard.

Still plan to build a succulent wall behind them, inspired by a mall over in the Hipster side of town that has fantastic giant walls of succulents growing on the building, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I have begun growing the various succulents I plan to use for the wall, though. I'll probably start that project next year. I'll start small by testing up front, then build the big one on the garage and the retaining wall out back if all goes well.